Hello. I am a fairly adaquate gamer, if I may judge myself, and I generally dislike the use of walkthroughs. I'd much rather play through guided by the game itself and enjoy what I may find, even if I may get lost on occasion. However, this "on occasion" has lately seeming increased 10-fold, or at least, something else takes its place. As I said, I generally dislike using walkthroughs, but games lately aren't so much difficult as they are either a) annoying or b) a mystery maze So now I find them an absolute treasure as I continually don't care to guess what it is I'm supposed to do in the developer's idea of "clever" and my idea of stupid. Final Fantasy XII: "So I just beat this boss and the treasure chest contained a measly 68 gil...Obviously the game isn't going to tell me, GameFAQs, what say you? Oh, that chest has a 80% chance of containing crap." God of War: "I hit the switch and a door opened...somewhere. Where? We're not telling! GameFAQs? Oh, I have to backtrack 5 screens and jump over a pile of rocks at the edge of the screen, despite countless invisible walls in the rest of the game." To get to my point, I've seen debate on walkthroughs before about how it can spoil a game, or make it more fun a second time through, but are games seemingly getting dependent on these things? Because the design in some games is getting downright absurd at times.
I only use walkthroughs on games that are so poorly designed and layed out that no amount of logic can let you reason your way through a section of the game. The lack of challenge in games these days is discouraging, everything is mostly do able first try, even many games on "hard." Example, when I first played the Crysis demo, I beat it on Delta on my first try. And with the Call of Duty 4 demo I beat it on the highest level of difficulty only dieing about 2 or 3 times. I remember the good old days with games like Goldeneye, Doom or Driver 2 where you would have to retry certain missions/levels so many times you would get frustrated and give up.
I only buy guides for games I really really like (Halo3, HalfLife2) because I just want a bit extra. I rarely ever use them but I love allthe artwork and Bestiaries.
I only buy guides for games I really really like (Halo3, HalfLife2) because I just want a bit extra. I rarely ever use them but I love allthe artwork and Bestiaries.MentatAssassin
If anything, I think games are getting easier and less dependent on faqs. Years ago, you needed a faq to finish a game or find that easter egg. The solution to the problems was just so non-intuitive or completely obscure, that there was no way anyone could figure it out.
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